Raptors fall victim to LeBron James once more in latest loss to Lakers

TORONTO — The Toronto Raptors have done a pretty good job of reversing narratives this year. Doubts in the pre-season about the ceiling of this team have been dispelled, questions about chemistry with such a big piece entering the fold in Brandon Ingram have been answered, and books have been closed on recent struggles against teams like the Bucks and Cavaliers.

But perhaps the biggest monkey hanging on the back of Toronto basketball, for a decade now, has been the looming presence of LeBron James. 

Sure, he left for the Western Conference back in 2018, but it doesn’t mean the tough stretches against his teams have gone away. Heading into Thursday, the Raptors had lost five straight against the Los Angeles Lakers, and James hadn’t lost in Toronto since 2019. 

So, regardless of the sciatica that plagued him to start the year or the slow ramp-up and an uncharacteristically unproductive showing against the Phoenix Suns on Tuesday, history said that the Raptors would be in for a fight against James.

Yet for the first time in a long time, it looked as though the Raptors had gotten the upper hand on their nemesis. With the game hanging in the balance, Scottie Barnes flexed his (award-winning) defensive acumen once more, blocking a turnaround mid-range jumper from James with only a minute to go and the game tied at 118, effectively snapping a 1,297-game double-digit scoring streak for the ageless wonder by keeping him at eight points.

But part of James’ mythical talent has come from his selflessness. His ability to find an open teammate, to make the right move for the team and make the winning play. Which is exactly what he did on Thursday, as with four seconds left, he picked up the ball above the break after Austin Reaves passed out of a double team, took a couple of dribbles toward Immanuel Quickley, and flung a bullet pass to Rui Hachimura in the corner, who nailed the triple at the buzzer and sunk the Raptors 123-120.

“I won’t make that a habit,” James said post-game on only scoring eight points. “(I’ll always) just make the right play. That’s all that matters. Win, lose or draw, make the right play. The game has always, always given back to me. Doesn’t matter if it’s win, loss, whatever, that’s just how I was raised.”

It wasn’t as though James wasn’t taking shots. He ended the night on a rough 4-for-17 shooting night — he’s only shot worse from the field 11 times over his 23-year, 1,567-game career. But he made winning plays everywhere else, finishing with six rebounds and 11 assists while playing some solid defence on Barnes for much of the first half. 

But with the game on the line and with his shot not falling through any of it, he made the right decision, one he’s gotten a lot of stick for throughout his career, but one that has helped him to 1,014 wins over his career, a mark that ties him for second all-time with Robert Parrish after tonight. 

“Yeah, of course I remember. I remember everything that’s been negatively said about my game throughout my career. That aspect was always one of the most foolish things I’ve ever heard, as far as making the right pass, making the right play,” James said when asked about critics of his pass-first mentality at times with the game on the line. 

“We are in the business of winning basketball games. My whole life, I’ve just played the game that way, I’ve taught the game that way, and I’ve won at every single level I’ve played at by playing the game that way, so there was no reason for me to ever change once I got to this level. Doesn’t change. Basketball is basketball. 

Tasked with defending him for most of the night, Barnes saw the game in a similar light.

“He’s always making the right play. And that’s what he gets criticized for, for making the right play. Doesn’t make sense,” the Raptors forward said of James after the game. “You know, people want him to be different in that aspect, but he’s always gonna make the right play, and you see he doesn’t care about it at all. He’s just trying to make the right play out there.”

Barnes ended the game with a statline that wouldn’t look all too out of place beside James’s name: 23 points on 8-of-16 from the field, 11 rebounds, nine assists and three blocks. He was the only Raptors starter to finish with a positive plus-minus at plus-3, and his 14-point third quarter was a big reason why the Raptors were tied with seconds to go in the fourth.

He made the right plays for most of the night as well. Aside from that block on James, in the fourth, Barnes dimed up Quickley, sent a pass to Jamison Battle in the corner for a long two, fed a cheeky dump-off to Sandro Mamukelashvili on a strong drive and grabbed two offensive boards. 

“It’s great. The difference there is only 20 years of experience, you know. So it was really good for him to get the opportunity to see what it takes to guard those guys,” Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic said of guys like rookie Collin Murray-Boyles and Barnes getting their chances to guard James. 

And while the defence from that duo held James off the scoresheet for the most part, forcing the ball toward others, that unfortunately meant ending up in the hands of one Austin Reaves, who has taken up the mantle as the Lakers’ go-to scorer on nights like Thursday without Luka Doncic. 

Reaves carried the load with 44 points, 10 assists and five rebounds while shooting 13-of-21 from the field and 5-of-11 from range. He’s averaging 41.0 points, 5.3 rebounds and 10.0 assists in four games without Doncic this year.

The 27-year-old has become something of an inevitability himself. He netted a ridiculous 22 points in the third quarter on jaw-dropping three-pointers from over 30 feet away and an uncanny ability to draw contact on drives to get to the line. 

Toronto has been a stellar third-quarter team this year and went into the night netting 31.9 points per game coming out of the break — the third-best mark in the league behind only Denver and Oklahoma City. 

But Reaves kept the Lakers’ head above water, countering the Raptors’ 40 points in the frame by helping his side to 33. The nine-point lead they built at half-time was down to two, but it could’ve been significantly worse had Reaves not played hero. 

That lead was built up by the Lakers’ size in the first half, with centre Deandre Ayton the beneficiary of the absence of Raptors big man Jakob Poeltl, scoring 10 of his 17 points in the first half off easy entry passes and lobs from Reaves and James.

The Lakers took the lead right away off the opening bucket of the game from Reaves, built up a 13-point lead — their largest of the game — with a minute to go in the second quarter and didn’t relinquish control of the game until midway through the third. 

Though the Raptors clawed back into it, old ghosts came back to haunt them. So while LeBron’s presumably never-to-be-repeated streak of 1,297 games of scoring at least 10 points came to an end, a Lakers streak of dominance over the Raptors lives on. Some narratives persist.

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